#like this isn’t about statistics or actual numbers it’s about engagement and interest idk

[orlesianhennin]

I don’t think that when people say Lucanis will be/is the most popular companion they are being literal or that they’re referring to everyone in the wider playerbase… we are referring to the actual fandom/community in which case it is very much true. I don’t care that most players are straight men who aren’t going to romance him, I AM a tad resentful that a ridiculous majority of hardcore/invested fans give him the most attention. It’s just disheartening and something that happens with every fandom.

And no I am not attacking people who are interested in romancing him in the slightest and I don’t think expressing frustration at this trend (Alistair, Anders, Solas, Astarion) is anything more than that… just expressing frustration! Romance being a part of these games is great and I love that people are so engaged with them. But there’s more to the game and any future content might be catered specifically towards one or two characters more than anyone else.

And it’s disheartening, again, when people don’t also appreciate the other characters or pay them any mind or they’re totally ignored and forgotten or only talked about in relation to dialogue they have with the fandom darling. And it’s alienating to be a fan of multiple aspects of the story and to care about the writing generally and try to engage with all of the companions who are all unique and interesting, and to exist in a wider community that seemingly only cares about their Special Guy idk!!!

I’m really not trying to shit on anyone’s fun at all I just wish people would devote even half of their time in these spaces to appreciating the other characters who are equally lovingly crafted esp the women characters that’s all

[werewolfashton]

2022 writing evaluation

darling @igarbagecannotevenoteven tagged me to do this, honestly unbelievable, thank you megs <3 your answers were so interesting btw!!

i’ll also include all my works in this bc i haven’t written much in 5sos this year lmao. the other stuff can mainly be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villainous_intentions

number of stories posted on ao3: 4 for 5sos, 20-30 in other fandoms, mainly stranger things (this is such a vague number bc i’m including drabbles)

word count posted for this year: ~53.332

fandoms i wrote for: 5sos, stranger things, the iliad/tsoa, [redacted]

pairings: lashton (2), malum (1), ot4 (1), harringrove (like 20+ and some platonic pairings), patrochilles (1), [redacted]

story with the most kudos/bookmarks/comments: for 5sos it’s but underneath we had a fear of flying in all regards

for other fandoms in kudos and bookmarks it’s don’t that man look pretty and in terms of comments: i was far too scared to hit him, but i would hit him in a heartbeat now and into the deep

work i’m most proud of and why: i’m really proud to have written 4k in one sitting for a wild and an untamed thing, and really all i wrote for the harringrove harvest probably

work i’m least proud of and why: ngl i really don’t like any of my 5sos fics very much except maybe the 2 song fics and some horror aspects so

share or describe a favorite review you’ve received: i got and still get so much love for one of my drabbles for st, those always make me smile and then recently i got the funniest review of my life tbh but that stays between me and the unfortunate souls that have my insta

a time when writing was really, really hard: the only time writing was not hard was during the writing challenges in june and october. or well it was still hard but i was putting out words like an insane person anyway. blessed days.

a scene or character you wrote who surprised you: still surprised to be writing in the first place. certainly wrote a lot of stuff towards the end of the year that i did not expect. wrote about a shitload of trauma. OH i wrote crack. did not expect to be able to do that. 

a favorite excerpt of your writing: i mostly like some of the one liners in my fics and this is one of them from into the deep end: "Fear spreads through [Steve] and he rushes forward, half expecting a monster in the middle of the bed, but when he moves behind the others to look into the room he stops as well. It’s not a monster, not really. At least he doesn’t think so. 

It’s just a mullet wearing asshole that’s supposed to be dead."

and i wrote this baby of drabble that’s one of my fav pieces of writing idk i struggled with this point of the review

how did you grow as a writer this year? i have become more open to just writing what i want. especially recently i’ve stopped really caring? like i still look at numbers too much but at least i write what i like now. i’ve also started writing longer works (at least sort of)

how do you hope to grow next year? i wish i had more time to write which isn’t really something i can force so i think i’m just hoping to not care about statistics as much. as to writing itself i wanna just expand my vocabulary.

who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc)? alright so, idk. i often feel very uncomfy speaking to people about my fic bc i think i annoy them and they only put up with it. i certainly have some lovely people who have been supportive (like em) and have been kind enough to beta for me (e.g. helen) and especially noah has been helping me with ideas. but yeah overall idk i shy away from talking about my fic bc it just ends up making me feel bad. thus i think the only overall actually very positive influence was the stranger things fandom, lovely feedback, actual engagement with fics, all that stuff has been helpful.

anything from real life show up in your writing this year? haha. y’all don’t need to know how much i projected this year thanks!

any new wisdom you can share with other writers? stop! fucking! looking! at! the! stats!

any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year? @pixiegrl birthday fic. like 30 harringrove drafts. much [redacted]. we shall see though i’m trying not to stress myself

tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: aight idk what’s going on here anymore so i’ll leave this as it is

[onceuponamirror]

It's crazy to me that your % is that low? Your fics are pretty popular. I didnt realize the problem was that bad

honestly i have it pretty good all things considered!!! i am very lucky and pleased to get the reviews that i do, and i know that my average is pretty solid in comparison. 

but that’s kinda the point i’m trying to make, so i’ll explain thoroughly about how i got those readership numbers.

i’m sorry this is dumb amounts of long and is depressing and has math in it (ew)

so—as a freelancer, i run my own business, so i’m in the habit of keeping track of simple numbers and statistics. 

and i’ve been struggling to put into words the frustration i feel (as well as similar feelings i know other authors have as i’ve spoken to them about it) about how reader engagement—especially when the platform is fandom, of which the whole purpose is fan engagement—never felt in line with readership counts, etc. 

and i couldn’t really express it, ironically, without feeling just really confused about what the “industry standard” was, more or less. is what i’m feeling valid, because these are actually low comment numbers? am i just late to the game on how it works? does this feel high? is it low? what’s the average? 

i’m very annoyingly one-track-minded and a weepy ass emotional person so i decided i needed some statistics to confirm or deny what i was feeling. so i started doing some math, to have some facts. 

i used to work retail, and one of the things we would track is conversion. 

as in, how many people come into the store that actually buy something? and/or, how many people come onto a fic that leave a comment?

to do this, the process is: number of sales divided by number of people who came in. so if 300 people came into the shop and 75 people bought something, the conversion would be 25% of people were buying.

in our case of fic, let’s say a story has 1000 hits and 50 reviews. think this is pretty generous example when it comes to fic, but the conversion would be 5% of readership ���bought”/commented.

so first i went looking across a few different fandoms to get a sense of this. i found a oneshot—from a couple years ago, granted—that had currently 17k hits……..and 27 reviews. SEVENTEEN THOUSAND. 27 reviews. (that’s the number without author replies)

goddamn!!!!!!!!! that is really fucking depressing. not even doing that math. i’ve got more numbers and they’re sad as hell, so at a certain point i stopped looking at oneshots, especially older ones. 

then i went to a long, popular, completed fic in the bughead fandom, which has what i think a lot of us would consider good review counts. 

conversion? approximately 1.7% overall. 

what about rereads, you might ask? sure! 

let’s say a completed, multi-chapter fic has 25k hits, and 500 reviews, not including author replies. this seems like a pretty solid, average number, right? possibly even unaverage. and we’ll be generous and say half of those hits were people rereading the fic twice. 

so 500 reviews at 12.5k hits is 4% of readership commenting.

now, let’s say it’s a third of readership rereading over time. 500 divided by 8333 jumps the number up to 6%

so, in the breakdown of per chapter, i can only do my own but—for example. as of right now, my latest chapter update on stealing home got 700 hits. as of now, 40 reviews. 

that’s approximately 5% of readers who read the latest update and then commented; 11% if i’m being very very generous and assuming all those people were actually rereads. but, i kind of doubt it. 

and 40 reviews!!! hot damn, that’s great. please, please, please, don’t misunderstand that i am incredibly grateful for every single comment, and again, i fully realize that’s a more generous number than many more deserving fics get. 

but again—that’s part of my point. 

it’s not perfect math by any means 

(and if you disagree with my numbers, please, anything other than basic math and i fall apart, so i could be embarrassingly off about the application of the equation and in which case i will eat my words. let me know if i’m wrong)

1. there’s no way to track exact hit numbers per chapter. i do it by just writing down the hit count right before i post a chapter, but obviously this isn’t precise.

2. because hit count isn’t necessarily even an individual person every time. but i googled this, because listen i’m nothing if not obsessively thorough, and ao3 does track IP, so clicks by the same person within a reasonable span of time only registers as one hit. 

            a. but again, those hits can count for rereading, over time

3. there’s a certain amount of shrinkage in these numbers, as ao3 doesn’t offer individual statistics like FF does.

4. on the other end, there’s also a valid amount of growth in a fandom like riverdale, which i feel like really swelled in size over the summer. but people still aren’t commenting on fics they may be reading retroactively.

because it’s not just my fics that i was tracking the review-to-hit ratio with; these numbers are pretty consistent, i’ve found. popular fics and lesser promoted fics as well. 

don’t get me wrong

i feel really lucky that my fics are p visible within the fandom, i do genuinely feel like they’re appreciated or at least being more or less well-received, especially because a lot of the reviews i get are so thoughtful and wonderful, and i am really pleased as punch about all that. 

and i’m personally not doing it for the reviews. i’m really not—i love writing, i love the storytelling, i find it immeasurably satisfying and i’ll keep doing it regardless. 

but it sucks, to be completely frank, to feel like you’re doing all this work and then shouting it into a vacuum. but you also know it’s not a vacuum, because you can see people reading it. you can see that it’s got hits. so then what? 

maybe you don’t know what to say. maybe you can’t muster the energy, or the time. maybe you didn’t like the chapter and you didn’t feel like leaving constructive criticism, that’s all okay. maybe you are one of those rare people who reviews later on, when you have time. 

maybe you’re a ghost with a wifi password. maybe you’re one of those people who doesn’t like to admit you read fanfic, which, hey, honestly i get. but the guest features exist and i know that you know it. 

really, there are plenty of factors. authors get it. it’s really, genuinely all chill, amigos, but that can add up, that’s all. 

and i promise you, it’s draining for the people putting out the content for you. we just want a little nudge so it doesn’t feel like said vacuum.

tl;dr

this is something that i’ve been thinking a lot lately now that i’m writing consistently—and at length, i spend hours and hours of my time on stupidly long chapters—and suddenly just feel….hyperaware of it all, whereas i definitely wasn’t before this past summer. and i’m hoping y’all weren’t aware of it either. 

i know i have a tendency to sound preachy so that wasn’t my intent, and frankly i kind of regret starting this math equation because it just made me more depressed, but hopefully idk, y’all find it as interesting and important as me. 

but i hope the takeaway is, regardless, review if you read it.